Women's Cross Country Looks to Defend Title at Dickinson Long-Short Invitational

LEWISBURG, Pa. – The Bucknell women's cross country team will compete for the first time in three weeks when it travels to Newville, Pennsylvania for the Dickinson Long-Short Invitational on Saturday. The event will be held at Big Spring High School and features two separate courses for 4k and 8k races. The Bison will only compete in the shorter of the two.

"We were originally going to just bring our non-varsity runners and split them between the long and short races like last year,” said Bucknell head coach Kevin Donner. “However after we decided to withdraw from Penn State last week, we decided to bring everyone and just run the shorter 4k races to use it as a tune-up for next week's races at Louisville and Lehigh. The athletes are excited about a shorter race and they will recover quickly from it."

A champion will be declared for each of the races, as well as an overall champion from the combined scores. Bucknell finished first of 40 teams last year, led by a runner-up finish among 301 runners in the 6k race by Christine Bendzinski. She was followed by Kate Scott (fifth), Meghan Carroll (sixth) and Emma Cousins (seventh). Deanna Godby is the top returning runner from the 4k race with a seventh-place finish.

In the team's lone event so far this season, Bucknell took first in a challenging field of eight teams at Colgate's Harry Lang Invitational, finishing ahead of Albany, No. 17 Syracuse, and two Patriot League teams. Scott took third and was named the Patriot League Runner of the Week. The Bison also received solid runs from Godby (eighth), Sarah Chandler (ninth) and Christine O'Kane (11^th).

The Bison follow the Dickinson Invitational with two events next weekend. One group of runners will compete at Lehigh's Paul Short Run on Friday, Oct. 2, while another group will run at the Greater Louisville Classic on Saturday, Oct. 3.